©Michael Player
Chapter 1:2-4 (ESV) - Hear, you peoples, all of you;
pay attention, O earth, and all that is in it,
and let the Lord God be a witness against you,
the Lord from his holy temple.
For behold, the Lord is coming out of his place,
and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.
And the mountains will melt under him,
and the valleys will split open,
like wax before the fire,
like waters poured down a steep place.
Question to consider: Why is the LORD depicted as ‘coming down’ to tread upon the high places of the earth?
In legal matters, an accusation must be corroborated by the testimony of two or three witnesses. This is not the case with God. The word of God is the very definition of truth despite the fact that the adversary and the faithless call it into question. However, in order to do this, they must first distort the word of God or remove it from its context and imply a different intent or meaning.
In the opening verse, the word of YHWH was given to Micah in such a way that he “saw” the judgment that was to come. Revelatory visions were not the only way the LORD revealed His word to a prophet. Sometimes this word came by way of a heavenly messenger (angel). It is important to understand the type of word given when trying to discern its interpretation.
Because revelatory dreams and visions were seen and then described by the prophet, visual symbols were used to convey spiritual realities in a way that finite creatures could understand. In order to convey the transcendence of God, He was depicted on a throne or in a temple above the earth.
The glory of God may have been present in the holy of holies in the earthly temple in Jerusalem, but that was not His dwelling place. As Paul told the Areopagus in Acts 17:24-25, “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”
Mountains were considered to be places of worship, and many temples were built on them. Being suspended between heaven and earth seems to have significance in a people’s desire to reach the divine. Personally, I think it is our unconscious recognition of Christ who was raised up on a Roman cross to bring us to God. Again, the image of God coming down from His place to tread on these mountains spoke to His transcendence and reminds me of the almost humorous way God had to stoop down to see the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11.
While valleys were often equated with times of darkness, sin, war, or trial, they were also places of fertility– where “life” happened. The vision given to Micah depicted God’s judgment upon everything and everyone in Samaria and Judah. Some people will try and take this vision in a literalistic fashion to say it must be some future nuclear holocaust or God descending in some kind of space craft with photon torpedoes to melt the mountains. However, the prophet declared these things before the destruction of Samaria in 721 BC by Shalmaneser V of the Assyrians as a call for Judah to repent and avoid a similar fate for Jerusalem.
Dear heavenly Father, thank You for being both near to us and vastly above us. Thank You for setting the course of history and giving us the opportunity to turn from our sin and be reconciled to You through Christ. Give us ears to hear Your call and eyes to see Your mercy so that we may tell others of Your grace. Amen.